King David was known as a man who sought God’s will in all things, even though he often failed. The Psalms record many of his prayers for God to guide him and make him a good leader. Psalm 26 is one of these prayers, and verses 8-10 include good objectives for any leader:
“O LORD, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. Do not sweep my soul away with sinners, nor my life with bloodthirsty men, in whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes.”
Sometimes we may not know how to pray “for kings and all who are in high positions,”[1] as Paul suggests, but in this cry to God, David gives us at least 3 things to pray about. He lists qualities he wanted to pursue, and some he wanted to avoid, but which are good for any leader. Therefore, on the model of Psalm 26, we can pray for the leaders of our countries and communities today.
We can pray for political leaders who:
worship God (who “love the habitation of your house”)
do not seek violence and vengeance (who are not “bloodthirsty men”), and
are not corrupted by money (whose hands are not “full of bribes”)
During His life on earth, Jesus called 12 men to special positions as His disciples or apostles. Out of these 12, at least 4 and possibly 7, were fishermen, a common trade at that time. The gospels have many fishing stories, including one in Luke 5 when Jesus is about to call His first disciples.
One morning after Simon Peter and some other fishermen had been working all night without catching anything, Jesus decided to preach from Simon’s boat to the crowd that was following Him. After teaching, Jesus told Simon: “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”[1] Simon answered: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”[2]
Simon ended up obeying, but not before objecting: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!” Some questions may have gone through Simon’s mind: Did this travelling rabbi just tell me how to do my job? Nighttime was the best time for fishing, and they caught nothing, so why did He tell them to try again? Maybe Jesus, as a non-professional, didn’t know that? Maybe the felt like “I’m the expert here!”
However, Jesus knew what He was doing because when they obeyed, “they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.” There were so many fish that, they “filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.”[3]
One lesson of this story is that Jesus can perform miracles by controlling nature. Another is that Jesus had an unlimited ability to help Simon and the others do their jobs! And if Jesus was better than professional fisherman at fishing, what does that mean for other jobs? Jesus always knows better than we do about any job!
So, whether you’ve had a productive day, or you feel like you’ve “toiled all night and took nothing” don’t hesitate to ask Jesus for career advice! As Simon (later known as Peter) wrote in his own letter, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” – 1 Peter 5:6-7
Sometimes the Bible asks us to do things that are hard to take literally. For example, in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 Paul writes that we should “pray without ceasing.” Other translations say “pray continually,” the same basic message. But what does it mean? We can’t kneel, fold our hands, and repeat the Lord’s Prayer all day every day. Paul wasn’t asking us to do the impossible, but how does one actually do this?
The life of Nehemiah, partially recorded in the Old Testament book bearing his name, may provide a good example for us. Around 445 B.C., Nehemiah was part of the third group of exiles in Babylon to return to Jerusalem. About 90 years after the first group returned, he heard Jerusalem’s walls and gates were still in ruins. He returned to lead the rebuilding of the walls, meeting opposition along the way from those who moved into the area during the exile as well as some of the Jews themselves.
Scattered throughout the book are several brief prayers, what Warren Wiersbe called “telegraph prayers,” [1] in 1992, but we might call them Twitter prayers now. These very short appeals to God are often made quickly and quietly, and you might say “continually.” I’ll put them in 3 categories:
The first group of these prayers are prayers for strength. Early in the story, Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to King Artaxerxes and had to work up the nerve to ask the king to let him return to Jerusalem and take on the work of rebuilding the walls. Nehemiah 2:4 says: “Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.” We don’t know what exactly he prayed, but he must have done it silently and quickly during his conversation with the king, otherwise the king might have been offended. Prayers can be dropped right into any conversation![2]
Second are prayers for justice, which are similar to the “imprecatory,” or cursing, Psalms, such as Psalm 58. In these prayers and Psalms the writers curse the enemies of the writer and of God. Instead of taking time away from the work on the wall, or vowing to take vengeance themselves, Nehemiah trusted God to righteously judge all evil. In Nehemiah 6:14, he prays this about his opposition: “Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid.” Nehemiah is honest with God about his frustrations but turns them over to God to take care of them.[3] We too can pray for God to handle any scores we feel we need to settle during the day!
The third category are prayers of dedication, reminders that the work is being done for God and asking that He bless the outcome, as well as the workers, including Nehemiah personally. In Nehemiah 13:14, after the walls were rebuilt and he oversaw the collection of the tithe, he prayed: “Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service.”[4] God does not forget any service given to Him, but we can pray to remind ourselves who we serve and trust that He will remember!
Nehemiah’s constant life of worship was made up of more than just short prayers made in the moment. Longer prayers (all of chapter 9) and fasting are recorded, and along with these short prayers are a clue as to what it means to “pray without ceasing.” It means to always keep the lines of communication open, to consider that God is there, willing to listen, and lovingly able to bless His people any time. Even a split second in the middle of something is a good time to pray because His love for us is steadfast. We always need Him, and He is always able to meet our need!
Therefore, we can repeat the prayer of Psalm 66:20, which says:
“Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!”
Coda
Steven Curtis Chapman’s 1996 song “Let Us Pray” captures this idea of “pray without ceasing” beautifully. In it he sings that we should pray “every moment of the day,” because “the Father above, He is listening with love and He wants to answer us”
You can read the song’s lyrics at this link. Or listen to the full song at this link.
[1] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Determined (Nehemiah) (1992). P. 34. [2] Nehemiah 6:9 is another example. [3] Nehemiah 4:4-5 and 13:29 are similar prayers. [4] Nehemiah 5:19, 13:22, and 13:30-31 are similar.
Near the end of Book 3 in the Psalms (43-89), several Psalms read like cries for help by writers at the end of their rope. In Psalm 86:14, for example, David writes: “O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.” While the exact circumstance is unclear, David knows there is a wide conspiracy against him, and his only hope is to turn to God. The Psalm opens with “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.”
Likewise, when we feel desperate and don’t know where to turn, these Psalms remind us that God will never turn us away. On Psalm 86 John Calvin comments that “the more severely any one is oppressed, and the more destitute he is of the resources of human aid, the more inclined is God graciously to help him. That despair therefore may not overwhelm our minds under our greatest afflictions, let us support ourselves from the consideration that the Holy Spirit has dictated this prayer for the poor and the afflicted.” In other words, because these Psalms are in the Bible, we can be sure that, no matter the mess our own choices or the actions of others have put us in, God in His steadfast love will listen.
Throughout the Psalm, David writes reminders of the character and works of God as a contrast to both his circumstances and his feelings of futility. Like him we must always remember that our character is never so bad that God loving us is inconsistent with His character, and that our circumstances are never so bad that loving us is beyond His power to achieve.
When all you have is God, He is enough.
Even for the most desperate, there is always a way out, as Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:13 – “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” In Psalm 86, David does not just pray for a miraculous deliverance, but in verse 11, David looks for the way of escape: “Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” A united heart is one that feels no anxiety because it knows it is seeking God’s will and willing to act on it based on reverence for Him. God may urge us to merely wait for His deliverance, or prod us to actions we may not expect, but in all cases, He knows the way, because He is the Way. Only He can unite our hearts.
Bring your desperate anxiety to Him and let Him show you the way forward. When all you have is God, He is enough. When you feel your faith is weak because you can’t see or feel God in your life or the world around you, begin with “Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy,” and He will listen.
Does being forgiven by God cause us to fear Him less, or to fear Him more? Perhaps it’s both.
Psalm 130:4 tells us this about God: “But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” To one way of thinking, this seems backwards: why does knowing that God has forgiven us make us fear Him more? Shouldn’t we fear Him less when forgiven? It depends on what we mean by fear.
For me, getting Psalm 130:4 to make sense with the order of forgiveness and fear required a re-thinking of repentance. My conclusion was: the one who has not been forgiven has not repented, and the reason they did not repent was that they did not fear God. They did not understand Him properly. They might be afraid of God, but that’s not the kind of fear referred to in Psalm 130.
In contrast, the one who has been forgiven has repented, and they repented because they understood it was the best thing for them to do, out of a fearful respect for God. A proper understanding of God’s character makes us turn to Him with our guilt, rather than run away from Him. We should not be afraid of God, where we are motivated to be passive – avoiding mistakes that would anger the one we fear. We should fear God in that we revere Him and respect His authority, and therefore actively seek to please Him.
A lot goes into repentance. When we pray and ask for forgiveness, it’s often a simple prayer made with the proverbial faith of a child, but there are a lot of assumptions we make when we say that prayer. Every prayer of repentance directly or indirectly acknowledges some or all of these things:
1) God as the source of the law, the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong 2) Him as the righteous judge who is personally offended by our sin 3) His omniscience, knowing we cannot hide our sin 4) His uniqueness, as there is no other God to turn to 5) His steadfast love for us, knowing He bore the cost of our sin, therefore enabling us to approach Him 6) His compassion for us, since He lived as a man 7) His power and willingness to heal us of sin 8) His consistency of character: that He is not arbitrary
If we don’t implicitly or explicitly believe these things, why would we repent and ask forgiveness from God? Why would we expect to get it? Exploring that set of statements could fill multiple volumes of theology books, but we don’t need that knowledge. In His grace, He honors our simple, heartfelt confessions. He paid the price for all our inadequacies – even when we don’t fully understand our own prayers or who we’re praying to. The Spirit pleads with the Father on our behalf[1]. Mercifully, our forgiveness is based on His faithfulness to us, not on our detailed theological knowledge. 1 John 1:9 tells us: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Even our faith is imperfect, but His faithfulness bridges the gap between our childlike faith and His omniscience. He knows all our doubts and all their answers. We come as we are, but with fearful respect, and are forgiven.
Only through acceptance of the cross, where Christ’s atoning blood was shed for us, can God in His Holiness commune with us. Only through forgiveness will the Holy Spirit come and live in us. Only by tasting of His goodness do we really know what He is like, not before. And if we never repent, we don’t learn what it tastes like, we only know what you’ve been told about God, and we might not have been told the truth.
Psalm 130:4 shows us that genuine repentance leads to forgiveness and gives us a better appreciation of who God is. As we experience Him more, we live Psalm 34:8 for ourselves:
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!”
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 